This Broken Body...

This broken body has a good reason to be hurting so badly right now and it is due to our book coming out called Our Broken Bodies. I am not sure when it will actually be available for purchase but I am hoping sometime this summer.

Why do I hurt from a book you may ask? Well, it is because I was the editor of the book and due to my deadline, I ended up having to complete 230 pages in 48 hours. That is a lot of reading propped up on my left arm in bed (I am bedridden in case you didn’t know) while I used my right hand to edit on the tablet. It doesn’t help that I currently have some sort of mass in my left upper arm that I am having an MRI on soon because it is pushing on a nerve and causing me pain. Oh well, a deadline is a deadline!

I had more time to edit the book but things kept coming up like severe tachycardia, the Tilt Table Test I told you about in my last entry, a severe case of the stomach flu, a crazy thing called Chronic Lyme Disease that makes you feel like crap 5 out of 7 days a week, doctors’ appointments, holidays and generally trying to live my life in bed 24 hours a day. Truthfully, there is no excuse for not starting earlier I suppose.

Regardless, I am now physically paying the price for two days of intense mental stimulation and poor physical positioning while I edited a great book that we are publishing as a collaboration from numerous writers who are living with various chronic illnesses. This book started out almost 3 years ago when a dear friend who has a blog decided to ask a bunch of us “bloggers” to submit some of our work towards a book that she wanted to put together for charity.

It blossomed from there and turned into a book that not only shares the life stories of the most extraordinary survivors I have ever read but the second part is a section to support people who may be out in the community suffering from their own chronic illnesses. We talk about how our illnesses have affected our jobs, relationships, our children, our futures and then we give people coping strategies, checklists for when you go to the doctor, ideas for how to lift your spirits, ways to get creative and consider career changes plus so much more.

A book like this could only be written by a collaboration of a bunch of people who have lived the life. We have all suffered from different chronic illnesses ranging from MS to Fibromyalgia to ME to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome to Chronic Lyme Disease to some of the more obscure diseases that I am sure some of you have never even heard of like Palatal Myoclonus. It is a fantastic book that is educational, down to earth, moving and will be beneficial to those suffering from chronic illnesses who feel like no one understands what they are going through.

As I spend the next week sleeping off my pain from editing the book, I will know that my contribution was worth each aching hour because I have made a difference. Everyone who gets a copy of Our Broken Bodies in their hands will be better for having experienced the life altering words that these people have taken the time to share with you.

A lot of them went through great pain just to send in their articles, get their pictures taken or like me…propped themselves up on a sore arm in bed for two days to make sure there weren’t any typos or incorrect grammar in the book just so it would be perfect for you. I hope you take the time to buy a copy because all the proceeds are going to charity and it has most certainly been our labor of love. Happy reading!